Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems are widely deployed by companies to automate customer interactions through telephone calls in the areas like travel inquiry and booking, phone banking and trading, telecommunication service providers etc. There is increased use of IVR by enterprises to reduce the cost of general sales, service, inquiry and support calls to and from the company. The benefits of IVR systems include handling of large call volumes, reduction in cost and improved customer experience.
These automated telephone IVR systems facilitate answering customer calls by interacting with customers. These interactions are enabled by presenting the caller with a voice menu by playing voice prompts. Further the caller is expected to select a choice by pressing a key on the telephone keypad or by speaking a command into the telephone. Generally the information required by the caller is also played back as a voice prompt to the caller.
This kind of interface is referred to as the Voice User Interface (VUI). The information played in voice menus and voice prompts has to be listened and remembered by the user. This increases the cognitive load on the user. For example if a user calls a Telephone Banking IVR system and asks for his last five transactions, the Telephone Banking IVR system will continuously play the transaction details to the caller one after another. The user has to both listen and remember this lengthy information containing date and amount of transaction. The lengthier transaction makes it expensive to both the service provider and the user.
The IVR system interaction can be enhanced by presenting the user with a visual menu similar to the voice menu on his mobile phone. A text-enhanced voice menu system can provide a voice menu to the caller, and additionally send menu information in text form within a voice communication, where an enhanced telephone is used. This system separately stores the audio information for producing voice menu and the text information for producing text version of voice menu. Voice and text are communicated to the user by using two different paths for each of these modes of communication.
Another method provides a Interactive Voice and Video Response (IVVR) system by adding a video picture to the IVR systems. This technology improves the video picture experience for users and facilitates them to get to the needed information more quickly than using just a recorded voice menu. The IVVR system requires the user to make a 3G video call from a 3G mobile phone.
In one method, text information is sent from one mobile to another, transmitting via radio a series of dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) tones corresponding to the selected character. This transmission occurs through voice channel. This method includes text transfer from mobile to mobile and does not include text transfer from IVR system to mobile.